I previously covered a method of programming the ATtiny85 using an Arduino Duemilanove. However, my Duemilanove board isn’t working at the moment and I need to work on a project so I decided to program it with an Atmel AVRISP mkII programmer. Here are the simple steps, mostly so that I don’t have to lookup the pinouts online next time I need to do this. Below is the pinout for the ATtiny85 as well as the AVRmkii programmer.
Follow the beginning steps for the previous post by putting the ATtiny board files in the Arduino folder. Then, attach the pins from the ATtiny to the AVRISP mkII programmer. This is pretty simple. Connect VCC to VCC, GND to GND, MISO to MISO, etc… You’ll also need to connect power to the ATtiny separately since the AVRmkii won’t provide power.
For my first sketch, I always upload a blink sketch to make sure the programmer is working. Change the default blink sketch to use a different pin since the ATtiny85 doesn’t have a pin 13. In this picture, I’m using pin 3. If you notice the led blinking at a rate other than you expected, make sure you’re using the correct board (1MHz vs 8MHz).
So there it is, another super easy way of programming that ATtiny series chips. BTW, I just fixed my Duemilanove by using the same programmer to burn a new bootloader onto the board. This programmer is turning out to be a pretty good investment.
The Wandering Engineer 